Gavin Millar – Dreamchild (1985)

Quote:
Dreamchild: A Film Essay by Elwin Cotman

Dreamchild, directed by Gavin Millar: “What was that name that Lewis Carroll used to call you?”

“That’s right. Dreamchild.”

That is a beautiful movie poster. Made doubly so by the fact that, in the movie, the moment it illustrates most likely didn’t happen. Dreamchild, the first film made by the Jim Henson Creature Shop without the auteur’s input, is a film about memory. What happened, what we wish had happened, what we wish we could take back. It is also, like the poster, beautiful.

In college I worked at the University of Pittsburgh’s Hillman Library. I was in the stacks department. We put books back where they belonged. I believe the department was famous for having Pitt’s longest-serving employee, a cantankerous old man who headed stacks for 30 or 40 years and always talked about his trips to the “piture show.” It was a job anybody could do and, accordingly, we were paid nothing. But it was comfortable, so comfortable it never occurred to me to secure an internship or some kind of real job at any point during my three years of undergrad. For two years I pushed around carts and tried not to fall asleep while shelf reading.

A great part of shelving books was the opportunity to lollygag and dillydally. I got plenty of reading done when I was hidden among those metal shelves. A particular favorite place to waste time was the magazine section, an impressive collection of hardbound magazines. I would dive into the old issues of Cinefantastique, the greatest ever journal devoted to speculative film. It was like having a time machine. I wiled away the hours reading articles about classic movies from before they came out. On-the-set reports from Temple of Doom and Conan the Barbarian. Reviews of Dragonslayer and Krull. Interviews with Joe Dante and Tobe Hooper during the height of Spielberg’s media ascendance.

One issue previewed a small English movie with an intriguing title: Dreamchild (1985). An intriguing title with an intriguing premise, based on true events: the 80-year-old Alice Hargreaves (née Liddell), the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice, journeys to America to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University, in honor of the author’s centennial. In Depression-era New York City, she has several fantasy sequences involving characters from the novel, designed by the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

Let me repeat that.

Jim Henson. Doing Alice in Wonderland.

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Language(s):English
Subtitles:English